Welcome to the third post in the “7 Reasons Most Books Fail And How To Fix Them” series.
In case you are just joining in, I already talked about two reasons why books fail and you can check them up here:
7 Reasons Most Books Fail And How To Fix Them (Part 1)
7 Reasons Most Books Fail And How To Fix Them (Part 2)
Or you can click here to download all 7 of them at once.
So, for now, let’s move on to reason #3 why most books fail.
Writing For Everyone!
In working with authors to put their message out there, one of the preliminary questions I like to ask is “who is this book for?”
And in most cases, you hear them say “this book is for everybody! Anybody can pick it up and learn a lot from it”
But when I hear answers like this, I just know I have found an author who is unknowingly programming him/herself for failure.
Knowing your desired reader is important for two reasons.
1. It helps you to tailor the content of your book to your reader
Have you ever read a book and it felt like the author was speaking directly to you?
Or have ever read a book and it felt like the author is a mind reader and is just answering your questions?
If you are an avid reader, chances are that you have come across such books before.
The reason you felt that way was that the author decided to focus on a particular reader and speak directly to that reader.
(By the way, a Pro Tip is to write your book like you were talking to one person. In fact, I lead my client to go as far as naming that one person in their mind and create a reader avatar before writing the first word)
So if you want to write a book that feels so personal and connects with your readers in a way that turns them from just readers to fans and customers, you want to make sure your book is aimed at a specific audience.
This audience can be defined by a need, a pain, a struggle, gender, location, family size, profession, hobbies and so on.
For example, while anyone person can write a book about fitness, the person who goes on to write about fitness for busy moms will gain traction faster in the fitness space.
2. It helps you market your book effectively
You see, as we will later discuss, another reason great books fail is because of a lack of proper marketing for the book.
It is imperative to understand as an author that no matter how great a book or any product for that matter is, it is the marketing of it that puts it in the hands of the right people and determines how successful it becomes in the market place.
Now, marketing 101 will tell you that you need to know your customer to effectively market to them. You need to know their struggles, their habits, desires, frustrations, location and so much more to speak in their language.
How do you suppose you do that without first defining who you want to write to?
Apparently, until you define who you are writing to and their pain points, it is impossible to craft a compelling marketing message that they would respond to.
So in the case of your book, marketing it becomes almost effortless when you know who it is written for and how to communicate with that person.
The fourth reason most books fail is because of inadequate preparation and underestimation of the writing process by authors.
When people go through my training programs, they are always blown away by the level of preparation that I lead them through before they write the first word of their book.
All that prepping helps to set the right foundation for the future success of the book but sadly, most authors never do so. I will show you what these necessary preparatory steps are in the next post.
Meanwhile, I like you to decide for a moment,
Question:
Bearing the topic of your book in mind, who would you like to reach? Who is your target reader?
Let me know in the comments below what your book is all about and who your target reader is.